Wouldn’t it be nice if one didn’t have to be creative coming up with new marketing ideas? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to simply pick from an offering if ready made ideas, push a button and let a system take over doing the dull repetitive work for you, you simply reap the benefits and watch sales and profits pile higher and higher. Yes, wouldn’t it be nice. The real world doesn’t work that way.
These days, with pressures being made on business owners and only a limited number of hours in a day to get an ever growing list of responsibilities addressed and dealt with, owners demanding or seeking anything that will save them some administration time is being jumped upon. Thus, we are seeing more and more companies embracing marketing automation.
What exactly is marketing automation? Well, in its simple form, it’s a process that is set up and operates without any human intervention. As an example, currently very popular with dry cleaners offered by a few point-of-sale systems is an automated text message sent to pick-up and delivery customers. Your customers on a pick-up and delivery service route are compiled onto a list. The point-of-sale system will send a text message to these customers the night before or the morning of their scheduled pick-up. The idea is to remind customers that the driver is going to be coming by and the customer should put their bag of clothes out for pick-up. These messages are sent by the point-of-sale system automatically. Once a customer is added to the list, they start receiving the messages, the dry cleaner doesn’t have to do anything more because it’s an automated system doing its thing, week in, week out, each and every week.
Many dry cleaners are very excited by this automated reminder service and swear that their customers love it too. In the interest of full disclosure, it’s one service I offer and I can testify to the effectiveness of such a system. The message open rate is amazing, well above email open rates. And, yes, many customers do appreciate and like the reminder messages, more so when they are new to the pick-up and delivery service and have not been trained to remember to put their bags out. And, the reminders DO work reminding customers when pick-up day is as well as vastly reducing the number of times the driver encounters a ‘no bag’ pick-up. The system DOES work, pays its own way and accomplishes what it’s designed to do.
But, some automation can work against you as well. Yes, like any tool that can be used for good, there are occasions when the same tool can be used poorly. As an example, I’ve seen some companies set up an automated system to solicit reviews and feedback from customers. When a customer picks up an order, or has one delivered back to the customer’s home or office, a system sends an email or text message to the customer asking them to click a link in the sent message that leads the customer to a web page with a form to capture the customer’s name and comments.
What can go wrong is some customers who recently left a review and being asked for another review again and again and again, EVERY TIME they receive an order. You can imagine the frustration a customer who picks up an order every week feels when he isn’t even loaded into his car yet and he is receiving a review request. Or, you just poured your heart out with a long wonderful review and then next month you pick-up another order and you are asked for a review again. I’ve even seen situations where customers get so frustrated by some automated systems that they fake a review by leaving four stars but a very negative review in the comments, basically messing with the system.
So, automation can be good, or it can be bad. Which it ends up for you depends entirely upon you. You simply cannot set and forget because that can lead to trouble. You really need to set up some precise goals, measure if you are meeting those goals and routinely follow up with how your automated systems are working for you. Realistically, you should be revising your automation marketing systems every six months and auditing their performance.
Ask yourself, how many messages are being sent automatically each month? How many messages are being opened and read? What is the failure rate of message delivery? What is the response rate? Have you had any compliments and complaints regarding your automatic systems?
What kind of results are you getting (more orders, less no bag pick-ups, more pieces, reviews, good reviews)? If you are collecting comments, feedback and reviews, how often are you responding to reviews being left? Have you read some of the comments, or at least checked on them to make sure it’s good news and not bad?
Does your automated system augment your manual systems, perhaps even replace them? Have you redeployed your staff and their efforts to other areas freeing them up to do more supplemented with automation? Are you saving labor and leveraging your investment in automation to generate lower costs and better returns?
Are there more opportunities where you can deploy automation to generate more results? I’ve found that there are innovative ways to combine email, text messages, reviews and feedback systems into a quality control/feedback loop. There are ways to use autoresponders to build lists and sub-category or special interest lists from within your customer base. There are even entire lead generation and lead capture systems that can be put in place to go prospecting for customers on a daily basis, entirely on automatic.
These are exciting times and we should be using the technology at our fingertips to our fullest advantage. If I can be of service in some way, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask.
